The Last Banquet (12 page)

‘A mistake,’ Emile said.

‘A necessity,’ Jerome replied. They squabbled for a few miles as to whether a man who didn’t own forests should have his opinion taken over a man who did. Somehow, Emile won all the debating points and still lost the argument. His sulk lasted until we turned into the approach to Chateau de Saulx and then disappeared at the fairy-tale sight of the chateau’s towers and turrets and moat.

‘We have three chateaux,’ Charlot said. ‘Five if you count the little ones.’ The rest of us hushed him into silence and we were all grinning as we tumbled out of the coach and found the duke and his family drawn up to greet us. We bowed to the duke, all of us, including Charlot, and kissed the duchess’s hands. We bowed to the girls who curtsied in their turn. Then Élise broke ranks and hugged Charlot so hard round the middle that he gasped, unless he was pretending. She did the same to me.

‘You’ve grown,’ I said. The kind of idiot thing an eighteenyear-old boy says to a thirteen-year-old girl he hasn’t seen for two years. She grinned.

‘You haven’t.’

I tousled her hair, which produced an outraged shriek and a complaint that it had taken Mama’s maid hours to arrange it and she wasn’t going to have it done again, even if we were having a proper supper in the dining room. Charlot laughed, and nudged me towards Virginie, but his sister was already following Margot and her mother back into the house.

This time we were given rooms in a tower.

There was a drawing room we could share with three chambers off it, set on the floor above Charlot’s own quarters, which, I knew, were a floor above Virginie’s. Our luggage was waiting for us and a fire was laid but not lit in the grate. Looking from a window I saw mist and flooding across distant fields. Burgundy was a country of grapes and wheat, orchards and cows. None would do well in this weather and the savage winter and poor spring would make things worse. ‘ . . . Isn’t she?’ Jerome asked.

I turned to find my friends looking at me. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘And what?’

Jerome sighed. He came to stand beside me and, for second, as he looked where I’d been looking, he was serious. ‘We have flooding at home,’ he said quietly. ‘My father writes that the crops are bad. The potato harvest has failed and the apples have already started to rot. We’re lucky to have the sea. If nothing else we can eat shellfish.’

‘Isn’t she?’ Emile echoed.

‘Who? What?’ I demanded, more crossly than I intended.

Emile looked at Jerome who became the Norman bear again, his shrug huge and exaggerated, his gut large from winter. He would thin down again. He was always that way. Eating in winter and bored with food in the summer. ‘We were saying Virginie is attractive,’ he explained. ‘The way Charlot talks about her you’d think she was ugly.’

‘They’re rivals.’ I said it without thinking.

‘For what?’ Emile asked, sounding interested.

‘For everything. Margot’s too grown up to bother him and Élise too little. Only Virginie is close to him in age. Well, she’s two years younger.’

Jerome considered this and admitted it was possible. ‘I’m going to kiss her,’ he announced. ‘See what happens.’

‘She’ll slap you.’

‘Tried it, have we?’ He grinned, and grinned some more when my face reddened and I swore she’d never slapped me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘my turn now.’

‘Mine, actually,’ Emile said.

‘A wager,’ Jerome said. ‘The first to steal a kiss.’

‘Without Charlot knowing,’ Emile added. ‘The first to kiss, and touch.’

It was as well he couldn’t see my face. My feelings for Virginie were unchanged, and her turning away in the courtyard had put a darkness in me that the mist and flooding and Emile’s stupid bet did nothing to lift. ‘Are you in?’ Emile asked.

Jerome said, ‘What’s the prize?’

‘The honour of the kiss,’ Emile replied, then smirked. ‘And the thrill of the touch, of course. We mustn’t forget that.’

Jerome was smiling. ‘And you?’ he said.

I shook my head, excused myself and went to unpack my case. What little it contained had been bought with money Charlot’s father sent the colonel so my life at the academy could be more comfortable. My uniform was cut from decent cloth, I had my own leather hunting coat and a decent sword in place of school issue. I unfolded the coat, hung it on a hook and put the book of poems Margot had given me on a table beside the bed. Then I washed my face, checked my nails were clean and went downstairs without waiting for the others.

Weeks passed and we emptied a copse of wood pigeon, killed an elderly boar under a cathedral oak in the forest beyond the river, and took as many trout from the streams as we could manage. We failed to find a stag big enough for our pride to allow us to kill it. And by the time we returned to that part of the forest a few weeks later even the smaller bucks were gone. ‘Poachers,’ Jerome muttered.

Emile scowled until he realised he was being teased.

Our first month became a second, and half of that went before we began to talk about returning to the academy and how we should spend the last few weeks. Virginie remained unkissed by any of us. Whether by intention or design, Margot, Virginie and Élise had spent much of their summer with an aunt in the Loire. Charlot simply shrugged when I asked him about this, saying the ways of his mother were beyond the wit of man. They returned eventually, however, and Charlot invited them hunting.

The day came and Margot declined, having already said she thought it unlikely. Élise was not allowed to go, retiring to her chamber to sulk furiously. That left Virginie, who came down the steps of the chateau with her chin up, looking uncomfortable and red-eyed, obviously aware she was out-numbered four to one by boys, even if one of them was her brother. I discovered later she’d had a furious argument with her mother immediately before. An argument so serious her father intervened, requiring Virginie to apologise to her mother for rudeness, while decreeing she could join us after all.

We’d been warned to be careful. We’d been advised that the temper of the jacques was sour. We’d been told they’d burnt a manor in the next province. We’d been exhorted and instructed so comprehensively that half the pleasure was leeched from the day before we even left Chateau de Saulx. We carried boar spears like lances, rising to the trot and then beginning to canter as we tried and mostly failed to stick cabbages as we passed cottages and fields. And found our humour again in the lunacy of our play.

Charlot, being Charlot, took us beyond the second wood, the first wood being as far as we’d been told we could go. There was a boar apparently. And if not a boar then a five-point stag. His thrust was we’d find something in the old forest better than anything we could find in the woods. Charlot led us down the track, while Emile and Jerome reluctantly rode side by side when the path was wide enough. Reluctantly, because that left me to ride beside Virginie, who stared straight ahead. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘For what?’ Her face was unreadable.

‘That you had to come with us. That we’re here.’ I gestured at the canopy of oaks above us, the mulch and loam beneath our hooves, which should have been drier at this time of year, even this far into the forest.

‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in weeks.’ Her face hardened. ‘It’s the only beautiful thing I’ve seen in weeks. Have you met my aunt? No, of course you haven’t met my aunt . . .’ Up ahead, I could see Jerome and Emile trying to hear what made Virginie so unexpectedly impassioned. They could catch her tone but not her words. ‘I’ve spent my summer being introduced to one fool after another . . .’

‘Why?’ I asked.

She sighed. ‘Why do you think? My aunt is helping my mother choose me a husband. He has to be rich. He has to be grand. He should have a position at court, or the expectation of one . . . What?’ she said, seeing my expression. ‘Did you think it would be different?’

As the path narrowed I let Virginie edge forward and fell back to take the rear, which was as well as I had no answers to her question. All I could do was try to look at the cathedral oaks with her eyes and see them as beautiful. And they were in their way, huge branches like beams above our head, trunks rising like pillars, the greatest trees buttressed by lesser oaks that tumbled against them. We’d begun to pass charcoal clearings within a few minutes of entering the forest. Wide circles of hacked-back undergrowth with smouldering earth-covered mounds where the charcoal baked. Naked children watched us pass, filthy as animals. Their faces black with soot, their hair matted and grown together in the way hair is if it’s never washed. We saw hard-eyed
charbonnier
women with wooden shovels in their hands. Occasionally they worked topless so the brats bound to their chests could feed. The youngest children sat naked in the doorways of earth huts, slightly older ones scavenged the undergrowth collecting twigs, their shifts and filthy shirts too short to cover their buttocks.

‘Gods,’ I heard Virginie mutter. She dropped back to bring her horse closer to mine. Emile looked nervous, Jerome blind to the ragged misery around him. Charlot . . . ? Who knew what he thought. He rode ahead humming some song to himself. After the charcoal clearings we reached a wide river and a ford where the depth of the water and speed of the flow made me fear for our horses. I was beginning to wonder how much further Charlot intended to take us when he splashed through the ford, pulled up on the far side and turned back, grinning. ‘We’re here,’ he said, his first words since leaving Chateau de Saulx.

1736
Charlot Injured

S
liding from his horse, Charlot drops his reins to the dirt. Anyone else’s mount would bolt at the spookiness of the river’s edge or wander off and need recapturing.

His horse stands patiently while he walks back to help his sister dismount. We’re right in the heart of the forest, an hour’s ride along wooded tracks from the nearest village. The trees overhanging the river are hundreds of years old but they feel older.

‘We’ll tie our horses here,’ Charlot says.

‘And carry the damn buck ourselves if we catch one?’

Jerome demands.

‘All right, we’ll take one horse. Emile’s . . . It’s the least spirited. Mine would dislike the smell of blood and so might the others. You happy to lead it?’

Emile nods, sullen-faced. He rides less well than Charlot and Jerome, who both rode from their earliest years, although only slightly less well than me. Charlot has simply given me the better horse. No insult; at least no intended insult.

Virginie’s mare might do but Charlot doesn’t want to risk her refusing.

Virginie steps closer to me and I crook my arm. She hesitates for a second, then takes it. She’s trembling. ‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘This place. Can’t you feel it?’

All I can feel is her hand resting on my arm. We have a rifled musket, two boar spears, a couple of pistols . . . And a hunting dirk each. We also have lunch in a pannier slung behind Virginie’s saddle. Charlot says we should leave this.

He takes the musket and Jerome and I take boar spears, with Jerome also taking a pistol, leaving a pistol for Emile.

Virginie smiles sourly as we divide the weapons among us. ‘Would you like the pistol? I can give Emile my spear . . .’ ‘Jean-Marie . . .’ Charlot is laughing. ‘Don’t you dare arm my sister. My mother would never forgive you.’ At which Virginie mutters that her mother is unlikely to forgive me anyway. And I suffer five minutes of sideways glances from Jerome and Emile, even though I’m not part of their stupid bet.

‘This way,’ Charlot says.

We push through the undergrowth, making our own path or widening those used by deer. Charlot first. Emile always bringing up the rear. We pass a ruined charbonnier hut, the charcoal mound dead and the circle deserted. Thorns have taken back the edge and bracken shows in the hut’s doorway.

A fire pit is filled with the cold bones of a wild pig. ‘Poachers.’

This time Jerome isn’t teasing, simply stating the truth. We pick up the fresh spore of a deer a few minutes later. Its tracks lead further into the forest and we follow them. ‘I can hear something,’ Emile whispers.

Charlot stops his humming and we all listen. The sound of breaking branches comes from behind thorns to our right. ‘Wild boar,’ Jerome says. Swiftly, Charlot draws back the hammer on his musket, Jerome lowers his boar spear and Virginie drops her hand from my arm, leaving me free to lower my own spear.

‘You stay with Emile,’ Charlot tells his sister.

She looks mutinous and Emile opens his mouth to protest, then looks at me, shoots Virginie a sideways glance and decides he doesn’t mind that idea after all. Charlot, Jerome and I push our way through a cascade of thorns towards the noise and find ourselves in a clearing. A dozen charbonnieres look round, and then one of them rips his knife across the throat of a struggling deer. The animal’s death frees those holding it down to stand and face us. An old man behind them carries an ancient musket that he lowers and fires. No thought or hesitation.

The ball hits Charlot, who drops his own musket and tumbles to his knees, his hand clasping his shoulder. Jerome dives for the musket, raises it and pulls the trigger. The flint slams down and the gun misfires. The old man laughs and I throw my boar spear. It is to be the first and only time I kill anyone. Something I have no possible way of knowing then. Jerome raises his own spear as another man reaches for the old man’s musket and powder horn. We advance on the charbonnieres, who retreat. All I have now is my hunting dirk, but it’s the spear in Jerome’s hand and the death of their leader that stills them. Faces blank as millponds watch us.

Reaching the old man, I rip my spear free. It’s a fearsome weapon. A long blade ending at a crossbar to stop a wounded boar forcing its way up the hilt as it tries to reach its killer.

Jerome stabs the man who reached for the musket. It’s a fast, vicious and unexpected blow. One that would impress our instructors at the academy. He’s already withdrawing the blade when the man begins to fall. Another man dives for the musket and rolls away as Jerome stabs a second time. ‘This is the duke’s son,’ he says. ‘Harm him again and the duke will slaughter the lot of you, and your families.’